Interface management of silicon-nanowire based hybrid solar cells through facile solution-processed oxidation

Surface recombination of photogenerated carriers turned to be critical issues against the realization of highperformance nanowire-based solar cells. To overcome it, the strategy toward passivating nanowire surfaces was essential where the improvement of minority carrier lifetime was identified in recent years; instead, the examinations of optical management as well as charge-transfer resistance at heterojunction were still limited. In this study, we herein investigated the facile, inexpensive and reliable HNO3-based chemical passivation that directly introduced SiOx coating on Si nanowires. By adjusting the oxidation durations, the cell performance exhibited the improved conversion efficiency with more than 39% of efficiency enhancement than reference cells. Impacts of light harvesting and charge separation characteristics on cell performances were in-depth envisioned.

Automated summary

In this study, a facile, inexpensive, and reliable HNO3-based chemical passivation method was used to introduce SiOx coating on Si nanowires, resulting in significant improvements in cell performance with over 39% enhanced efficiency compared to reference cells. The impacts of light harvesting and charge separation characteristics on cell performance were deeply explored.